PRO 12 Leinster 31 Dragons 10:THE LEINSTER young guns, after a frustrating RDS first half, blew away the Dragons with three second half tries for their first competitive win of the season.
Disappointed with last week’s result against Ospreys, Leinster were rarely stressed but more importantly earned the first points that should take them off the bottom of the PRO 12 table.
For the first five minutes Leinster raised the temperature but thereafter, while they were by far the brighter team and made Dragons scramble around plugging holes in their defensive line, they couldn’t quite close the deal in most of their first-half moves.
Too often Leinster seemed frenetic and congested, which led to inaccuracies. They were regularly breaking the Dragons’ gain line but unable go though the phases to create holes for the ever willing Brendan Macken, Eoin O’Malley, Fionn Carr or Dave Kearney.
The one time Leinster did open their opponents in the first half arrived when the sides were level 3-3. Carr turned on the gas leaving four players in his wake, essaying down the left and the ball was fed across with the classy Isa Nacewa providing Kearney. The winger stepped inside only for a smothering defensive tackle to envelop him on the line.
It went to the TMO and was no try but Nacewa kicked his second penalty for an earlier offence and Leinster went in 6-3 up, thinking it should have been more.
It was a vast improvement on the previous week but the thought that the Dragons could engineer just one break and make it pay was never far away from the 14,362 crowd in attendance.
Then, from nothing, it was Carr again who stepped up a gear for Leinster after Nacewa caught an innocent enough kick deep in his own half. A wide pass to Carr and off he went carving through the Dragons before releasing Eoin O’Malley into the corner.
Uplifting and just what Leinster needed. Ian Madigan took notice and two minutes later the outhalf was building a wonderful solo effort of his own. This time it was route one as Madigan jinked and sidestepped his way up the park, embarrassing the Dragons defence, before gliding in under the posts to present Nacewa with an easy conversion.
From a scratchy 6-3 lead at half time, Leinster had essentially put the game to bed at 18-3 with two pieces of brilliance inside three minutes.
A breakaway try from Jason Tovey on 57 minutes matched by Carr at the end put a veneer on the score but changed little of the outcome. One Leinster concern was Kiwi outhalf, Mat Berquist who was stretchered off near the end.
LEINSTER: I Nacewa; F Carr, B Macken, E O'Malley, D Kearney; I Madigan, C Willis; H van der Merwe, R Strauss, J Hagan; D Browne, D Toner; K McLaughlin, D Ryan, R Ruddock. Replacements: J Cooney for Willis and M Berquist for Madigan (both 55 mins), M Flanagan for Browne, L Auva'a for Ruddock, A Dundon for Strauss (all 61 mins), D Hudson for Kearney and J McGrath for Hagan (66 mins), J O'Connell for Berquist (69 mins).
DRAGONS: M Thomas; A Hughes, T Riley, P Leach, M Poole; J Tovey, J Bedford; P Price, T Willis, B Castle; A Jones, R Sidoli; A Coombs, G Thomas, H Ellis. Replacements: D Way for Castle (30 mins), S Jones for Hughes (h-t), L Evans for H Ellis (52 mins), S Mith for S Jones (58 mins), N Williams for Price (74 mins), J Groves for Coombs (78 mins).
Referee: D MacPherson(SRU).
